Thread: Moral discussion: Why do you eat animals?

Originally Posted by Mario92

By this reasoning, how the hell is eating meat therefore immoral? As a consumer, all I'm doing is supplying demand for meat. It is the people who raise and slaughter the animals who treat them cruelly, not I. I was blissfully unaware of such practices until I read this thread, even.

When did I say eating meat was immoral? I support both sides of this debate. (See post #132) [obscenities deleted]

What I was pointing out was that it's the farmers' responsibility to deal with the problem of wild animals getting crushed during harvests. Yes, it is also the responsibility of the people who raise and slaughter animals to not treat them cruelly.


You made an important point, but you twisted my words around in the process. Nowhere did I say that eating meat was immoral. It's the people who raise and slaughter animals who are cruel.

Originally Posted by cmind

Irrelevant. The point someone else (not you) was making was that being a vegetarian was a good economic decision. Which it's not, consider meat gives cheaper nutrients on the whole. And by cheaper, I mean dollars.

I don't believe it is irrelevant. You don't exist in a vacuum and neither does your income. If everyone gave up meat tomorrow there would be a surplus of 9/10ths of the grain production subsidy budget that could go to other social projects, or lower your taxes (thereby increasing your disposable income). They are inextricably linked.

Fine, I don't agree that the animals I eat are "barely sentient"

A barely-sentient creature could be one which does not possess a conceptualisation of itself as an entity in the world, and merely reacts to stimuli in its environment. It moves away from pain, it likes receiving pleasure. It is incapable of conceiving of itself in a future timespace (and therefore, incapable of planning for it) and lives a very much moment-to-moment existence. An animal that fails the mirror test would fall into this category, but it's not a necessary condition that one must be barely sentient to fail the mirror test. It may be a purely reactionary creature, not one that can reflect upon its decisions and decide to do otherwise when presented with a similar or same choice.

This is why I make the distinction between bare-sentient creatures and sentient/self aware creatures. As previously stated earlier in the thread, dogs, dolphins, pigs, parrots, orcas and all of the great ape species have been shown to possess the ability to plan further into the future than a few moments and have a recognition of self in a mirror. War dogs have shown self-sacrificial behaviour by charging into the line of fire to drag wounded soldiers to safety. Apes and chimps have been observed showing altruistic behaviour towards their fellows, and to co-operate to achieve a goal. Orangutans have been seen stealing fishing spears and mimicing village fisherman stabbing at fish swimming in rivers. African Grey Parrots can learn several hundred (in a few cases, several thousand) words of English and learn proper grammar and syntax. Killer whales have been observed teaching their young how to make seals slide off of ice floats into their mouths, only to spit them out (physically unharmed) back onto the icefloat to perform the feat again, then swimming away and leaving the scared-shitless seal be. Pigs have been shown to do better at research video-games than some species of chimp, using their mouths to operate joysticks. Elephants have mourning behaviour when a member of their herd is killed or dies, and they even have a sense of humour which I've witnessed firsthand by having one steal a banana bunch out of my hand when I wasn't looking, then flapping his ears, opening his mouth and doing a little dance while snorting.

None of this is proof. It's evidence. I can't even prove that another human being has a mind definitively. But the balance of evidence strongly suggests I would be remiss to assume otherwise. If you don't agree, then you need to explain all that behaviour and more (present in the scientific literature) in terms of something other than a conscious or bare-sentient mind at work. I wish you good luck in doing so.

And seeing as though you haven't even defined the term, let alone proved the assertion, this discussion has ended.

You're free to leave if the discussion is upsetting you. Is this hostility really necessary?

Ah, finally, the real point. Animals can eat animals because they "need" to. Well, I "need" to eat meat because if I don't, I get hungry for meat. And I really couldn't tolerate a veggy diet. No choice for me.

Your need to eat meat is psychological and malleable, largely born out of habit. Theirs is biological and fixed, owing to the fact that the stomach and intestines of a true carnivore can't digest plant matter at all. The two aren't equatable.

I watched that video and I have to admit that it made me think about changing my carnivorous ways.. I mean I think we humans were designed to eat meat, but not when it was stuffed in a small cage for it's whole life, injected with chemicals, and suffering until the day it was ready to be shipped off and made ready to eat. That's just cruel. Maybe if the obesity rate in this country wasn't increasing at such a fast pace(or even increasing at all) then we wouldn't have as many problems with this.

I think it would be extremely hard for me to give up eating meat, but the least I can do is try cut back a little.

Originally Posted by ElsiaStar

I watched that video and I have to admit that it made me think about changing my carnivorous ways.. I mean I think we humans were designed to eat meat, but not when it was stuffed in a small cage for it's whole life, injected with chemicals, and suffering until the day it was ready to be shipped off and made ready to eat. That's just cruel. Maybe if the obesity rate in this country wasn't increasing at such a fast pace(or even increasing at all) then we wouldn't have as many problems with this.

I think it would be extremely hard for me to give up eating meat, but the least I can do is try cut back a little.

Ah, a plethora of errors.

Originally Posted by ElsiaStar

I watched that video and I have to admit that it made me think about changing my carnivorous ways.. I mean I think we humans were designed to eat meat, but not when it was stuffed in a small cage for it's whole life, injected with chemicals, and suffering until the day it was ready to be shipped off and made ready to eat. That's just cruel. Maybe if the obesity rate in this country wasn't increasing at such a fast pace(or even increasing at all) then we wouldn't have as many problems with this.

I think it would be extremely hard for me to give up eating meat, but the least I can do is try cut back a little.

I commend you for doing so! Well done!

Just to add another tangent to the thread, the same considerations that lead one down a path towards veg*nism can lead to the opinion that all metropolitan zoos should be closed and their animals removed to sanctuaries with larger free roaming habitats. My city has such a zoo that is slowly removing its largest animals to a wildlife reserve about an hours drive out of town where animals can run over hundreds of acres of land. It's quite surreal to see a pride of lions roaming freely around the South Australian countryside (from the safety of a bus).

Originally Posted by Alextanium

Your need to eat meat is psychological and malleable. Theirs is biological and fixed. The two aren't equatable.

Humans have the capacity to consume both meat and vegetables. Therefore it is the individual's choice as to what they want to eat. It is completely natural for animals to eat other animals, and if an individual has the animalistic desire to eat meat, it is natural and therefore completely fine for him to do so.

Originally Posted by MindGames

Humans have the capacity to consume both meat and vegetables. Therefore it is the individual's choice as to what they want to eat. It is completely natural for animals to eat other animals, and if an individual has the animalistic desire to eat meat, it is natural and therefore completely fine for him to do so.

In stating this you've missed the entire scope and point of the moral argument we've been discussing. As soon as you use the word 'choice' it is by definition no longer a natural desire that is out of your control.

"Get my Dream-Pecker Wet"

Originally Posted by Alextanium

In stating this you've missed the entire scope and point of the moral argument we've been discussing. As soon as you use the word 'choice' it is by definition no longer a natural desire that is out of your control.

I haven't missed the scope of the debate. In fact, you fail to realize that allowing yourself to divulge in the desires naturally coded into your DNA is morally acceptable if the individual chooses to view himself as an animalistic being. This debate concerns the morality of eating meat, and if somebody views it as completely natural to eat meat, then based on that belief, it is not wrong to do so. It is no more right to eat a plant than to eat an animal considering the animal was slaughtered quickly just as is done in nature by other animals. The slaughterhouses are at fault when they choose to make the animals suffer more than the amount of suffering found in nature, and that is out of the consumers' control until they start petitioning for the better treatment of animals waiting to be butchered.

Originally Posted by Somii

"Get my Dream-Pecker Wet"

Originally Posted by MindGames

I haven't missed the scope of the debate. In fact, you fail to realize that allowing yourself to divulge in the desires naturally coded into your DNA is morally acceptable if the individual chooses to view himself as an animalistic being. This debate concerns the morality of eating meat, and if somebody views it as completely natural to eat meat, then based on that belief, it is not wrong to do so. It is no more right to eat a plant than to eat an animal considering the animal was slaughtered quickly just as is done in nature by other animals. The slaughterhouses are at fault when they choose to make the animals suffer more than the amount of suffering found in nature, and that is out of the consumers' control until they start petitioning for the better treatment of animals waiting to be butchered.

Human aggression and the desire to dominate our local tribe are also innate in our (male) DNA, but that doesn't make it moral to beat our wives and kill our rivals, whether one chooses to view himself or herself as an animalistic being or not.

This debate primarily concerns the morality of eating meat, as it pertains to the unnecessary suffering of conscious creatures. Moral relativism doesn't get you a get-out-of-jail free card for this problem. 'Based on that belief it is not wrong to do so' - in his eyes only. I can apply the same logic to a religious suicide bomber. His belief in an afterlife makes his act morally justified (to him). His martyrdom assures his place in Heaven. If he kills fellow believers, they will thank him for sending them to Heaven having died for the cause against the infidels. If he kills infidels, they will go to Hell where they deservedly belong. It's a no-lose situation in his mind, even an idiot couldn't fuck this up (short of locking himself out of his own car bomb). But no body who doesn't share his belief in his version of an afterlife will agree with his assessment of moral virtue.

Slaughterhouse practices are kept the way they are due to continued consumer demand as well as general consumer ignorance or apathy regarding their treatment. Pathetically lax laws that specifically exempt farm animals from the Animal Cruelty Prevention Act don't help the situation either.

Moral relativism doesn't work for religious claims and I don't believe it can work for dietary preference claims either, for much the same reason. Killing animals to eat their flesh does not put us on the path towards a world of greater moral virtue anymore than suicide bombings and holy wars put us on a path towards a peaceful co-existence with one another's cultural differences.

Originally Posted by MindGames

I haven't missed the scope of the debate. In fact, you fail to realize that allowing yourself to divulge in the desires naturally coded into your DNA is morally acceptable if the individual chooses to view himself as an animalistic being. This debate concerns the morality of eating meat, and if somebody views it as completely natural to eat meat, then based on that belief, it is not wrong to do so. It is no more right to eat a plant than to eat an animal considering the animal was slaughtered quickly just as is done in nature by other animals. The slaughterhouses are at fault when they choose to make the animals suffer more than the amount of suffering found in nature, and that is out of the consumers' control until they start petitioning for the better treatment of animals waiting to be butchered.

I believe it is completely natural for me to murder people. And also to fuck grandmothers. But I don't do these things. One for moral reasons, one for aesthetic reasons.

If this line of thinking were true then whatever you thought was good would be good. You could just believe that killing people was good and go and do it and it would be good. No one would miss the dead people or arrest you for what you are doing.

However it's clearly everyone's right to eat meat. No one is saying eating meat should be against the law. What is being argued(at least by me) is that it is more ethical(or less unethical) not to eat meat because it causes less suffering in the world. I would say that being able to empathize with other humans is what makes us moral. We think about how other people feel and act accordingly. I see extending this to animals as being a way of broadening your perspective on the world. THink if you were an animal, would you enjoy being locked in a cage, fattened, and then killed and eaten(and this description hardly depicts the real horrors of factory farming)? Now, I am in no way trying to say that by eating meat you are a bad person, but if you do eat meat then you value your own tastes(or convienence etc) over the life and experience of animals. I think that a persons capability for ethical behavior is based on their capability to empathize with others. If a person can empathize with animals I would think that they would have more of a capability of acting morally, though cleary this wouldn't always be the case.

But just to clarify, the fact that something is in someone's right to do does not mean that it is morally good. It is a persons right to be a douchebag but that doesn;t mean that being or a douchebag is morally good, or bad for that matter. The two are independent. To give a serious example, it is a persons right to have 12 children that they can't actually support or raise well, however it would be bad for society(immoral) for them to do so.

Indulge me for a moment with a thought experiment:

I give you total power to create any society you like. You can snap your fingers and in an instant create a society replete with all its laws, customs and prohibitions, on anything you like. But before I allow you to create it, I tell you the catch. You will be incarnated as a being living within the society you create. And you will not know in advance whether you are male, female, black, white, asian, young, old, gay, straight, democrat, republican, geek, sport enthusiast, able bodied, disabled, atheist, theist, polytheist, or indeed even human or animal. Given that you will be completely ignorant of who or what you will be in this society once created, what principle ought your society be based upon when you are constructing it?

Originally Posted by Alextanium

Indulge me for a moment with a thought experiment:

I give you total power to create any society you like. You can snap your fingers and in an instant create a society replete with all its laws, customs and prohibitions, on anything you like. But before I allow you to create it, I tell you the catch. You will be incarnated as a being living within the society you create. And you will not know in advance whether you are male, female, black, white, asian, young, old, gay, straight, democrat, republican, geek, sport enthusiast, able bodied, disabled, atheist, theist, polytheist, or indeed even human or animal. Given that you will be completely ignorant of who or what you will be in this society once created, what principle ought your society be based upon when you are constructing it?

Vegetarianism! Did I win???

Originally Posted by Photolysis

So being maimed and mangled in farming machinery or being poisoned is better than a relatively clean kill? That's a sudden death?

Certainly five minutes of bleeding out after a life of freedom is better than five years of never being able to turn around, to see sky, all the time breathing in the stink of your own shit and eating treated by-products.

Your comment on much corn being used as feed for livestock is irrelevant, I'm not claiming the moral high ground, nor am I especially bothered by it. You're just deflecting instead of answering the question.

It's not irrelevant at all. Every fuckwit knows that we can't eliminate animal death completely. We can only reduce it. And if 80% of corn goes to livestock, if we cut our livestock intake, then we cut the amount of farmland needed to feed livestock.

If you don't care, you're a hypocrite. It can be argued that it's the lesser of two evils sure, but no one can make it out to be a superior moral standard. Two murders is worse than one, but only murdering one person does not make that person a particularly superior moral character.

Field mice<pigs, field mice<people, pigs<people. I put different value on an animal life based on its intelligence (also, related, it's capacity to know torture rather than feel pain. Also, perhaps its scarcity and role in the ecosystem. But in the case of farmland critters, that bit is irrelevant).

Unsustainable farming is what makes meat-eating morally inferior.

I won't deny that many aspects of the meat industry are cruel and inhumane, but I don't see that it has to be particularly cruel, and that there are ways to do it whilst ensuring a decent standard of conditions and treatment.

It doesn't. This is right. Add in with that the requirement that farming practices become eco-friendly, and then I'll approve of meat-eatin'. But for now, we're producing (and eating oh god the obese children) more meat than we need, and doing it in a way that's fucking things up.

Originally Posted by Hazel

I don't know if this has been brought up, but animals eat other animals. Is it wrong for a wolf to eat a rabbit?

Not at all. A wolf doesn't shoebox-farm rabbits. Wolf packs don't cause deforestation and pollution (fuck. They safeguard the land from overgrazing). Wolves and rabbits have lived sustainably with each other for millions of years. Same goes for other predators.

Originally Posted by cmind

Vegetarianism! Did I win???

Consideration for the rights of all conscious beings with respect to their pursuit of happiness, regardless of the skin they happen to be born in.

And yet again with the unnecessary sarcasm. If you don't wish to actually contribute to the discussion you're under no restraint to leaving of your own accord.

Originally Posted by Alextanium

Indulge me for a moment with a thought experiment:

I give you total power to create any society you like. You can snap your fingers and in an instant create a society replete with all its laws, customs and prohibitions, on anything you like. But before I allow you to create it, I tell you the catch. You will be incarnated as a being living within the society you create. And you will not know in advance whether you are male, female, black, white, asian, young, old, gay, straight, democrat, republican, geek, sport enthusiast, able bodied, disabled, atheist, theist, polytheist, or indeed even human or animal. Given that you will be completely ignorant of who or what you will be in this society once created, what principle ought your society be based upon when you are constructing it?

This premise deserves a thread in its own right.
But I'd base it upon the scientific method. No shitty dogmas. If I can't build a society without religion (if I could, I would), I'll build one where religion has no teeth.

I want the left side.

Originally Posted by Alextanium

Indulge me for a moment with a thought experiment:

I give you total power to create any society you like. You can snap your fingers and in an instant create a society replete with all its laws, customs and prohibitions, on anything you like. But before I allow you to create it, I tell you the catch. You will be incarnated as a being living within the society you create. And you will not know in advance whether you are male, female, black, white, asian, young, old, gay, straight, democrat, republican, geek, sport enthusiast, able bodied, disabled, atheist, theist, polytheist, or indeed even human or animal. Given that you will be completely ignorant of who or what you will be in this society once created, what principle ought your society be based upon when you are constructing it?

I create a society with a maximum population of 1 billion individuals. The society is smart enough to automatically regulate this number, not through laws, but through customs. It keeps its own population in check. From there, I'd create a technology-and-science oriented civilization. One that is vastly superior to our own in this regard. After that, I'd create a law system that ensures some level of equity, but also the opportunity to be reasonably rewarded for hard work. The population, being relatively small, will have a vast supply of global resources by contrast, giving the masses a comfortable yet sustainable lifestyle. Then I would make the laws as free as possible while retaining the integrity of the system. That includes the right to eat meat. Ideally, that meat will be grown in vitro.

Of course, the above is only off the top of my head. Were I actually going to plan out a civilization, I'd put much more time, thought, and effort into it.

Originally Posted by Alextanium

Human aggression and the desire to dominate our local tribe are also innate in our (male) DNA, but that doesn't make it moral to beat our wives and kill our rivals, whether one chooses to view himself or herself as an animalistic being or not.

This debate primarily concerns the morality of eating meat, as it pertains to the unnecessary suffering of conscious creatures. Moral relativism doesn't get you a get-out-of-jail free card for this problem. 'Based on that belief it is not wrong to do so' - in his eyes only. I can apply the same logic to a religious suicide bomber. His belief in an afterlife makes his act morally justified (to him). His martyrdom assures his place in Heaven. If he kills fellow believers, they will thank him for sending them to Heaven having died for the cause against the infidels. If he kills infidels, they will go to Hell where they deservedly belong. It's a no-lose situation in his mind, even an idiot couldn't fuck this up (short of locking himself out of his own car bomb). But no body who doesn't share his belief in his version of an afterlife will agree with his assessment of moral virtue.

Slaughterhouse practices are kept the way they are due to continued consumer demand as well as general consumer ignorance or apathy regarding their treatment. Pathetically lax laws that specifically exempt farm animals from the Animal Cruelty Prevention Act don't help the situation either.

Moral relativism doesn't work for religious claims and I don't believe it can work for dietary preference claims either, for much the same reason. Killing animals to eat their flesh does not put us on the path towards a world of greater moral virtue anymore than suicide bombings and holy wars put us on a path towards a peaceful co-existence with one another's cultural differences.

That was well-reasoned.
And have you considered the health effects of refraining from eating meat? There have been studies showing that as vegetarian men age, they have decreased levels of testosterone compared to other men their age.

Originally Posted by MindGames

That was well-reasoned.
And have you considered the health effects of refraining from eating meat? There have been studies showing that as vegetarian men age, they have decreased levels of testosterone compared to other men their age.

Thank you.

Do you have any links to such studies? I've read veganhealth.org cover to cover and there's been no mention of lowered testosterone as yet.

Vegans who don't stay on top of their Omega-3's and B12 are at a high risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, depression and dementia. This isn't a specific mark against veganism however since a lot of people with an omnivorous diet have also been shown to lack B12. All of this is quite easy to regulate with a multivitamin or two, and just makes you a more active participant in putting nutrients into your body that it requires. Vegetarians have a much easier time here considering they still eat eggs and drink milk. While we're on the subject of milk however, if you possibly can you should switch to A2 milk rather than drinking normal milk. Normal milk lacks the A2 protein and has been shown to be carcinogenic.

A quick Google search brings up more than a few web pages concerning lowered testosterone in vegetarian males, but to point out one in particular, this web page cites a study showing lower levels of testosterone in vegetarians versus omnivores.

I do believe that this could be counteracted with dietary supplements, but I am unaware of any if there are.


I'm still unsure as to whether I should become a vegetarian, because I don't want to have to be overly concerned about my diet and what I'm not getting enough of in it. However I may choose to eat more fruits and vegetables whenever possible.

One of my concerns is also that grocery stores spray their vegetables with water, which I believe is fluoridated (correct me if I'm wrong) since it comes from a public water supply. I try to avoid fluoride-contaminated products whenever possible, and I have stopped drinking from city water supplies to cut down my fluoride intake even further.

Originally Posted by MindGames

I'm still unsure as to whether I should become a vegetarian, because I don't want to have to be overly concerned about my diet and what I'm not getting enough of in it. However I may choose to eat more fruits and vegetables whenever possible.

One of my concerns is also that grocery stores spray their vegetables with water, which I believe is fluoridated (correct me if I'm wrong) since it comes from a public water supply. I try to avoid fluoride-contaminated products whenever possible, and I have stopped drinking from city water supplies to cut down my fluoride intake even further.

The simplest cure to that is to educate yourself (even though its a vegan website it goes through vegetarian break downs too). In less than two weeks of casual reading you can learn everything you need to know about the vitamins your body requires and how easy they are to come by. Something as simple as a multi-vitamin every morning with breakfast will cover your ass. I personally take a B-complex and flaxseed oil capsule every morning (flaxseed with at least three meals a day), to cover me for omega-3 and B12. If you drink soy milk, B12 won't be a problem, it's loaded with the stuff. My uncle also takes an iron supp and vitamin C with his morning shake, but I'm less inclined to do so because my iron count is already high enough and I drink enough orange juice to cover my vitamin C intake.

As for the fluridated water, ask your lock supermarket what their practices are. And if that bothers you enough, go to a local farmers market on Sunday mornings instead and buy your produce straight from them. You'll be supporting local farmers in the process, and it's usually cheaper too. More money in your pocket.

Because it tastes good slapped between a bun with ketchup and a coke.

Is there more about this A2 milk on that website? What does the package look like, I've never seen any milk at the store that says A2, but I've never looked either. I don;t buy my own food so it doeasn't really matter now, but at some point it will.